Ch. 1: CLM Feed

Question 1

Car Location Messages

Answer 1

• life-blood of our TFM tracking system
• electronic data messages transmitted to our computer system from the RR
• contain critical info about the status of individual railcars that we track for customers
• CLMs can tell us the railcar’s location, what’s happening to the railcar, and where it’s heading

Question 2

CLM feed

Answer 2

consecutive string of CLMs for a particular railcar
(TFM –> Units (sidebar) –> Tracking info (tab))

Question 3

CLM Date

Answer 3

Date/time of when CLM data was captured by the RR

Consider the elapsed time between the first and last CLM in feed

Question 4

CLM ERPC

Answer 4

• railcar location
• contains station city & state/province
• is automatically matched by the TFM system to a SPLC# (if new, it must be manually added)

Question 5

SPLC Maintenance Table

Answer 5

• List of ERPC abbreviations attached to each SPLC#
  
  • found under “Tools” in TFM

Question 6

CLM Event

Answer 6

• one of 8 components of CLM Feed
• Railcar event codes tell us what is happening to the railcar

Question 7

CLM L/E

Answer 7

• Loaded/Empty status
• railcars can be moving incorrectly as loaded or empty

Question 8

CLM Train

Answer 8

• Indicates the ID # of the actual train that is moving the railcar
• A carrier often switches a railcar across multiple trains before delivering it either to the next carrier at the rail junction/interchange

Question 9

CLM Destination ERPC

Answer 9

• Indicates the destination of the railcar according to the current carrier
• listed in ERPC format
• let’s us know when carrier has railcar moving to the wrong location

Question 10

CLM Sources

Answer 10

• Rail Inc. external
• Carrier external
• “Manual Ops Entry” (can result in data entry errors) internal
• “Auto-posted by EDI Add System” internal
• “Event Generator” internal

Question 11

CLM feeds can be difficult to analyze because CLMs may be…

Answer 11

• Missing
• Duplicated from different sources
• Reported out of order

Question 12

When analyzing a CLM Feed…

Answer 12

• examine each of the eight pieces every time
• use practice and attention to detail to eventually visualize how a railcar has been traveling
• Always take note of the SPLC to which a CLM is associated
• Use PC Miler to map out CLM SPLC waypoints to make better sense of CLM feed